Alpha Wave

By Julie Parsons

After dropping out of college and running away from home, a young girl named Ally finds herself the guest of a mysterious mansion. The buildings interior may seem beautiful but it houses a dangerous history that John and the other guests must keep hidden. Deadly traps lurk around each corner that kill without mercy. But the deaths of each victim although gruesome are not permanent.

"Well we do die . . . but then we come back" John informs Ally upon her arrival.

The stakes are raised when it becomes apparent that Ally is different from any other guest before. But will this difference ultimately result in her death or escape?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 29, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462881857

Julie Parsons

Julie Parsons was born in New Zealand and has lived most of her adult life in Ireland. She has had a varied career – artist’s model, typesetter, freelance journalist, radio and television producer – before returning to write fiction. Julie lives outside Dublin, by the sea, with her family.

Book preview

Ally

How did everything get so messed up?

Sleeping in the back of my Chevy Impala was not my idea of living the good life. In fact, I couldn’t remember the last time that I could truly convince myself that my life was on track. The only thing that had been going in my favor was college.

Of course, no matter how well I did on essays, exams, and generously offered extra credit (which ends after freshman year by the way), there was still the matter of handing over a huge hunk of cash. The dean sent a letter and offered congratulations on making his list.

Great, but what about the fact that I couldn’t afford to stay in school? Scholarships? Yeah, right, educational funding was the first to go when the economy started getting sucked down the crapper.

I couldn’t say that no one would help me. I wasn’t the best person at asking for help. I couldn’t even confront my own family about finances, and because of that less-than-ideal character trait, I avoided my parents when I knew I couldn’t afford another semester at Central Michigan University. Instead I did what everyone else in my family did best—I found a way to ignore my problems and dig myself deeper in the hole.

By the time the second semester of sophomore year rolled around, I had a 3.9 GPA and was dropping out of college. Unsurprisingly, my mother was furious. Still, I felt that no one could top the anger that I felt. I couldn’t help but point out that it was not completely my fault that I could not afford college seeing as a part-time job as a cashier wouldn’t pay a $12,000 yearly tuition.

I thought about a story I had heard in which a girl confessed to her mother that she was pregnant and moving in with her boyfriend. The mother had completely flipped out, crying hysterically on the kitchen floor until the girl finally reassured her mother that she was not pregnant after all and that she had only flunked out of two of her classes.

Predictably, I told my mother the straight-up truth that I couldn’t afford to stay in college and was promptly informed that I would be either packing my bags or paying a monthly rent to stay. What can I say? My anger got the best of me. By the time I made it to Indiana, I had a quarter tank of gas, twenty dollars in cash, and an increasing sense of overwhelming anxiety coupled with exhaustion.

I didn’t want to go to a motel. Hell, I probably couldn’t afford a motel at that point, but I was getting more and more tired as each white line blurred past. I finally decided to pull over to the side of the road and sleep in the back of the car. I had a bunch of blankets in my trunk, and the weather was only just starting to get colder, so I figured I could last the night in my car and then try to come up with a better plan when I was well rested and a little less emotional.

I came to a stop, making sure that I was far enough from the side of the road so I wouldn’t have to waste the battery on hazard lights. I popped the trunk open and climbed out the passenger side door, still paranoid that a speeding car would barrel down the road, taking my door and my arm with it. I kept my head down as I walked to the back of my car, trying to keep the brisk autumn air off my face.

My trunk creaked open as I gave it the customary pounding required to make it cooperate. Don’t get me wrong, my car was practically pristine thanks to many hours of work put in by my father and myself, but for some reason we never could get rid of that trunk’s stubborn streak. I grabbed the blankets and then hunkered in for the night in the backseat of the car. I used the armrest as a pillow, and while my resting place of choice lacked the comfort of a five-star hotel, I still had no trouble dozing off as I recounted the past weeks of bickering with my mother. At least she wouldn’t wake me up in a few hours, demanding to hear the plans I made for my life. Honestly, I was completely lost in the subject area of planning for my future. I couldn’t see where I would be even a month from then.

Ally

As I slept, I dreamed that I was falling, the dream that everyone has had at least once. I expected to wake up seconds before I hit the ground but suddenly found myself at the bottom of a huge, cavernous hole that smelled like wet, moldy wood. If emotion could fill space, I would swear that despair flooded the hole to the top. The walls were almost translucent, more like moving shadows than physical matter, and I lost myself as I stared into their swirling depths.

I felt a pair of eyes fixed on the back of my head. Too afraid to look, but unable to ignore the feeling, I contemplated my plan of action. I’d seen too many horror movies, and my instincts weren’t to wait around and be killed. That being said, I knew that investigation of the creepy, make-your-guts-twist-and-turn-in-your-stomach surroundings often lead to a slow miserable death as well. Still, I slowly and carefully turned around, discovering that more than one person was watching me.

"Hello?" I said, more of a question than a greeting. At the best of times, I had a difficult time talking to other people, which wasn’t a trait that improved when they were all staring at me like zombies. They continued to watch me as if they were waiting for me to do something. I fidgeted nervously, noticing how awkwardly I held myself as the three people continued to stare.

There was an older man in the middle with salt-and-pepper hair and dark brown eyes. His eyes pulled me into their depths, almost as bottomless and full of despair as the well. I began wondering whether or not he was really as old as he looked or if it was just the expression planted on his pale, weathered face. Watching the skin around his eyes wrinkle, I would almost think that he was just concentrating on a difficult problem. But the sadness in his eyes—eyes that told me to run away and come closer at the same time—told me that there was no simple solution to his problem.

Next to him stood a petite woman with slate gray eyes and blonde hair also staring at me, trying to master the art of killing me with her eyes. Even on my mother’s worst days, it never looked like she was about to murder me. I couldn’t understand why she was so angry with me.

But another face pulled me away from her black hole of rage before I began to wake up. He looked so scared that I couldn’t help but wonder if I wasn’t supposed to be there. But what could pity, hate, and fear have in common toward the one action of me falling into their space? Whatever they meant, I couldn’t interpret their possible reasons with my haze-filled brain.

I snapped awake jumping up with a shriek and bumping my head on the roof of my car.

Crap! I shouted at the empty car, holding my hands to my head. I noticed that it was still dark outside as I nursed my bruised skull and tried to stop shaking.

I fished my phone out of my pocket, hoping that the battery wasn’t dead just yet. The screen on my phone told me that it was about three-thirty-three in the morning, which was odd because I had passed out only an hour earlier. Usually when I slept during the school semester, and even during the summer, I was out for a solid seven hours, maybe more if I stayed up late studying or watching television.

The time was the least of my worries, but analyzing my sleep schedule was the only thing I could do at that moment to keep myself preoccupied. Even when I was little, I couldn’t handle nightmares. They always left me unsettled, afraid that if I closed my eyes I would find myself right back in the dreamscape. Or maybe if I closed my eyes, the scary man chasing me in my dream would open my closet door and creep toward me quietly with an ominous-looking butcher knife the minute I let my guard down.

Despite feeling shaken up, I didn’t completely register that the feeling of being watched was still very much present. It was only after I let myself relax again that I realized the anxiety was not entirely because of my nightmare. I swept my eyes over my surroundings wondering if perhaps someone really was watching me.

I guess a person that watches too many horror movies even though they leave her with nightmares and an overactive imagination shouldn’t run away from home in the middle of the night. As my gaze turned from behind me to the side of the road, I noticed an old, decrepit barn that looked as though a gust of wind would cause the walls to collapse. In fact, a few boards had fallen from the side of the building, and a section of the roof had begun to sag, doing its best to fight against gravity. The whole scene reminded me of a haunted house I had visited a few Halloweens ago.

Leave it to me to find the most deserted, disturbing place to stop my car.

I obviously wasn’t going to go out there in the middle of the night to investigate. That would fall under the just plain stupid category. On the other hand, I couldn’t sink back into a restful sleep after noticing the eerie old shack, so the only solution was to get back on the road even if I had no idea of my exact destination.

As I climbed back into the driver’s seat, I heard a scream that would make even the toughest marine’s hair stand on end. I had never heard anyone scream like that, whether from pain or fear I couldn’t tell. Indecision plagued me once again.

If Freddie Krueger—another villain of a horror movie that I shouldn’t have watched—was out there, I was not going to interfere. I mean, I didn’t believe in running away when someone needed help, but Freddie killed everyone. I wasn’t even sure what happened at the end of that movie, but someone that could control dreams like Freddie wouldn’t be stopped by a scared nineteen-year-old.

Well, instead of running away like I wanted to, I smacked myself on the forehead (completely forgetting that I had just bumped it a few minutes ago) and forced myself to remain rational. Freddie Krueger was not real, and no matter how badly I had screwed up over the last few months, I wasn’t going to turn my back on someone in need.

I took a deep breath, opened the car door, and stepped outside. Naturally, the screaming resonated again, from nowhere other than the ominous barn, making me do a double take and almost trip over myself as I tried to get a grip. What was someone doing out there in the middle of the night?

Ha, kind of like you? I thought to myself. I reached for my cell phone to call 911, not believing I didn’t think of that before I went through the whole Freddie debate.

I also couldn’t believe that I had almost wandered into that creepy old shack all by myself when I had a means of contacting help, especially after watching all those ditsy horror movie girls run around screaming hopelessly, cell phone within reach the whole time. Of course, it wouldn’t have been in their pocket because in most of those movies they’re wearing a tight tank top and underwear. Honestly, how many girls really do that?

As I opened my phone, I saw that there were no bars. Okay, so I couldn’t contact help but I could at least walk in that door as prepared as possible. The only defensive weapon I could find was the Maglite flashlight Dad always forced me to keep in my car.

"Hold it over your head like this so you can hit ’em in the head," he would say as he demonstrated proper skull-crushing technique.

With flashlight in hand, I began slowly walking toward the building, trying to make as little sound as possible with each step I took. The screaming had stopped, and I couldn’t hear anyone else, making me wonder if maybe the girl was alone in the building. Maybe my silly worries had made me too late. Holding my breath, resolving not to be a complete pansy, I walked into the barn and gasped at the scene before me.

From the outside, the barn looked like a glorified, oversized outhouse, but the main room was at least forty feet high. I rubbed my eyes and pinched myself thinking that I must have still been dreaming in the backseat of my Impala.

Two sprawling staircases made out of what looked like marble met in the middle right in front of me. A crystal chandelier hung over the point where the stairs met. I really must have smacked my head harder than I thought. I began to walk around and explore the intricate pattern that the polished black and white floor tiles made. In the center, underneath